


The Best Goy a Guy Could Have

by hoosierbitch



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Hannukah, Hannukah Lamps, Insecurity, M/M, Traditions, fried food, holiday feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-05 14:45:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5378984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosierbitch/pseuds/hoosierbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Phil and Clint's first holiday as a couple, and Clint is determined to make it the best Hannukah Phil's ever had. (As soon as he figures out how to pronounce 'Hannukah.' And how to spell it. And what it's about. And how to celebrate it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Goy a Guy Could Have

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the prompt "Clint's celebrating Hanukkah for the fist time with Phil, and he has a mission: Deep Fry Everything." I went with Phil being Jewish and Clint being well-intentioned. There is less frying and more feeling, but as they are of equal nutritional value, I figure that's probably okay. :-)
> 
> (Also, in the Minneapolis Institute of Art collection, they call menorahs 'Hannukah Lamps.' [I shit you not.](http://collections.artsmia.org/art/5559/hanukkah-lamp-italy) That level of goyishness is the basis for Clint's grasp of Jewish holidays.)
> 
> A note: Goy is a word with complicated history, but in Yiddish it just means a non-Jewish person, no negative implications. My dad is the goyest guy I know (bless his heart), and every Christmukkah we eat cranberry sauce from a can because of him.
> 
> Thank you to the lovely, lovely mod for running this (and being kind with extensions!). ♥

“Tasha, stop laughing. This is fucking serious.” 

“It’s Hannukah, how serious can it be?” 

“It’s me and Phil’s first holiday as a couple, and I have one day to put it all together! This is a fucking rite of passage, okay?” 

“Phil’s just going to be happy to see you, he won’t care about Hannukah.” 

“He will care. His family used to make a huge fucking deal about the holidays. The last time my family had a holiday, it was me and you getting smashed on toilet wine in a Soviet Gulag.”

“And we had a wonderful time, didn’t we?” 

“Somehow I don’t think Phil’s going to be a fan of toilet wine and underground fighting rings. Tash, I’m not going to screw this up. I’m going to put together the best Hannukah since the fucking original.” 

“Clint—do you even know what Hannukah is?” 

“Sure I do. It’s like Jewish Kwanzaa, right?” 

“Oh dear.” 

*

Tasha sends him some Wikipedia links (and laughing, mocking emoticons) before she goes radio silent. Which is fine. Clint can do this mission solo. He backpacked across Antarctica with a broken knee and two Snickers bars, he can do Hannukah. 

He just needs candles. And a candle holder. He’d looked around every store in walking distance, but none of them carried Jewish candle holders. He has vague memories of Simone and her sidekicks talking about a candleholder for Kwanzaa, so he goes and knocks on their door. Sure enough, Simone has one—a kinara, she calls it—that had been a gift from her grandmother. 

“You do know I’m probably going to break this, right?” he asks, holding it with exaggerated care (his fingers are mostly Band-Aids at this point). 

“It’s you and Phil,” she says. “I’ve done stupider things for worse people. Now, do you need candles?” She’s got a wide, fond smile on, and Clint’s pretty sure it’s not just because he’d spent most of yesterday playing babysitter/jungle gym for the rugrats. 

“No, I got candles. Seriously, thanks.” If his hands weren’t so full with the kinara (which is old and fragile and beautiful and he should probably just give it back), he’d have hugged her.

“You better go,” she says with a wink. “Gotta have dinner on the table before your man gets home.” 

He smiles and nods goodbye to her and her minions, who wave in unison. _Adorable little fuckers._

When he gets back to his apartment, Lucky is still flopped on his side in the hallway, where he’s been ever since the smoke alarm went off the second time. 

“Drama queen.” 

Lucky flops his tail passive-aggressively.

Clint goes inside, leaving the door open (partly so that Lucky can come in when he wants, but also to keep airing the place out; the smoke scent was stubborn). He puts the kinara on the table next to a set of jacks. He’d looked for some Jewish spinning tops, which had been a big feature in a lot of the Hannukah pictures, but none of the bodegas in his area carried them. He figured one kid’s game is as good as another. Plus, he’s really fucking good at jacks.

By the time Phil arrives, Clint has succeeded in burning his forehead (apparently if you put frozen things in hot oil, a wall of steam will fucking attack you), gotten oil burns on his hands, forearms, face, ears, elbows, and feet, and blackened the ceiling of his kitchen. (Oil fires are no fucking joke. At least the second time, he had a fire extinguisher ready instead of water. He is getting so much better at cooking).

“Clint?” Phil’s voice rings through the apartment, loud and worried. “Why is Lucky in the hallway? And why does your entire building smell like smoke?”

“Just a sec!” He looks around the kitchen before he leaves. It’s…kind of awful. Smoke, oil, potato, more oil, flour, eggs, and eggshells are all over the counters and floor. The one intact pan that Clint has is fizzing angrily on the stove. 

At least the table looks nice. He’d been surprised to find a set of matching plates, cups, and suspiciously nice silverware tucked in the back of his kitchen cabinets. (He suspects Kate’s involvement. She’d been complaining a lot about his paper plates and red Solo cups lately.)

He’s almost to the door when he realizes he’s still got his apron on. The front of it is a picture of an incredibly muscled torso, with ‘Every Day Should Be Thor’s Day!’ in glittery pink written across the abs. Darcy and Jane had given them out as presents on Valentine’s Day. Thor had signed them. 

Phil is waiting outside the door, looking fucking edible. He’s wearing one of his dark grey suits but no tie; the top two buttons of his shirt are already undone, and Clint can see a bit of his chest hair. He’s playing dirty. Clint kind of wishes he’d put on a cleaner t-shirt. 

They’ve been dating for months, but Clint still hasn’t gotten over his initial reaction to seeing Phil. He has this moment where he wants, with every fiber of his heart and mind and body—and then a moment after that, when he chokes those feelings down, and fakes a smile. 

He’s wanted Phil for so long that it feels like the natural course of things—to see Phil and love him and then put that away so that he can go on with his life. 

Phil usually smiles when he sees Clint (no split second of hesitation, no fake smile, no doubt). Today, not so much. Phil takes one look at him and his eyes get really fucking big. 

“Which Russians did you piss off this time?” 

Clint winces and ducks his head, wishing he’d cleaned himself up a bit more. (He also wishes that he’d remembered to buy Band-Aids when he went out shopping for Jewish candles. He’d ended up borrowing _Frozen_ ones from the littlest Simone. Olaf is dancing across Clint’s forehead and down one side of his face.)

“No angry Russians,” Clint says. “Unless you count Natasha, but she didn’t do this.” He tenses when Phil moves forward, but all Phil does is touch his chin, tilting his face up to the light. The majority of Clint’s interactions with adult men consist of fighting or fight training. But he likes this new way that Phil touches him. He hopes he’ll have time to get used to it. “I was just cooking.” 

“Cooking? Cooking beat you up?”

“No, uh. I—come in? And I’ll show you?”

“Sure.” Phil takes his hand away from Clint’s chin, but his eyes are still on the small burns and bright Band-Aids. “Why is Lucky in the hallway? Was he bad?” 

“No, he’s staging a sit-down protest. Aren’t you, Lucky?” Lucky tilts his head and glares at Clint as much as a floppy golden retriever with one eye is capable of glaring. “Shut up, dog.” 

Phil’s smiling at him, sweet and fond, and Clint turns away, not sure how to act under that kind of scrutiny. “So,” he says, grabbing Phil’s wrist and tugging him inside. “I know you were kind of bummed about your Quinjet getting grounded last-minute in New York. And we—you know, holidays. Right? So I just did this kind of—I just put together a little, you know, a thing.” 

“If you’re speaking in code, it’s not one I’m familiar with.” 

Clint wrinkles his nose (which, ow, fucking oil burns) and sticks his tongue out. Then he brings Phil into the living room. “Um. Happy Hannukah.” 

He knows that if Phil had a choice, he’d be celebrating Hannukah with his family or his new team. Clint doesn’t have much experience with holiday celebrations, and zero experience with Jewish ones, but he wants Phil to want to be here. 

“Oh.” Phil drops his hand, staring at the room. The table is piled with stuff, the Kwanzaa lamp stands proudly in the middle of it, and Clint wrapped the Christmas tree (which had already been set up because Clint hadn’t taken it down from last year; he’s a fucking genius) in blue and white garlands, which are kind of Jewish, which probably makes them appropriate for Hannukah.

“The store didn’t have any Jewish spinning tops,” Clint says, sorting out the stuff on the table, “but I had some jacks, and I figure that’s probably about the same. Kid’s game and all.” 

Phil nods, kind of slowly, which means Clint got it wrong, but not offensively wrong. 

“Um, and I couldn’t find a Hannukah lamp anywhere, but Simone lent me her Kwanzaa candleholder, so that’s good.” Phil’s got an odd expression on his face. “Is that…bad? Like, religiously?” 

Phil smiles at him. “I don’t know. Probably not. They’re actually called menorahs. And they’re set up for eight days instead of seven. But this is great, it’s really beautiful. I’ll have to thank Simone later.” 

“Cool,” Clint says, wishing that he’d spent a little bit more time on Wikipedia and a little less time building snowpeople on the roof while singing songs from _Frozen_. (He is a fucking amazing babysitter.)

“And are those—are those birthday candles?” 

“Yeah,” Clint says, kind of regretting some of his choices. “I know they’re not very, uh. You know. Jewish.” 

“They’re perfect,” Phil says. “They’re purple. They’re—are they trick candles?” Phil’s got the box in his hand, but Clint manages to snatch them away. 

“Simone has some extras, I just—I didn’t think.” He stuffs them in his pocket. 

“Oh, guilt,” Phil says, in an oddly happy voice. 

“What?” 

“You got guilt,” Phil says, picking up a gold coin from the table. 

“I—want, do Jews call their Hannukah money ‘guilt?’ Isn’t that kind of…anti-semantic?” 

“Anti-semitic,” Phil corrects. “And it’s gelt,” he says, over-pronouncing it. Clint feels like he’s about to flunk out of social studies. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s all from the Hebrew anyway. And it—” He stops with a frown. “This coin is really heavy.” 

“Yeah,” Clint says. “I know the internet said Hannukah money is usually chocolate, but I was running kind of short on time, and Thor had a bunch of gold coins he said I could borrow. He’s trying to figure out an Asgardian currency exchange rate with the Bank of New York, but negotiations don’t start until Wednesday.” Phil puts the coin back down very carefully. 

The pile of crap on Clint’s table looks a little less impressive than it had before Phil showed up. 

“Dinner is kind of—we should probably order take-out and you should avoid the kitchen for a while. But I have a bottle of Manishewitz wine.” It’s half-empty, because after the first oil fire Clint had needed a fucking drink. It is, without a doubt, the worst wine he has ever had. “And I got that Adam Sandler movie.” 

“I don’t think I’m up for _Happy Gilmore_ again,” Phil says. 

“No, I got _Eight Crazy Nights_ from the Indian video place down the street.” They’d chased it down special for him. 

“That sounds perfect,” Phil says. He sounds sincere. He’s a good liar, though. 

“That’s a really nice thing to say.” 

“It’s true.” 

Clint steps back almost involuntarily. He doesn’t like being lied to. “It’s not perfect. I’m new to the whole holiday thing. And I’ve never been to a Hannukah party before, obviously, and I want you to—to have a good time.” 

He wants Phil to enjoy spending his holiday with Clint. He wants Phil to spend more holidays with him. All of them, actually. Kind of forever.

“You are, without a doubt, the best goy a guy can have,” Phil says, stepping forward and circling Clint’s waist with his arms, pulling him in. Clint gets tense for a second before his body catches up and remembers that this is Phil, not an enemy; this is Phil, and Clint is allowed to touch him back. 

He kisses Phil, closing his eyes and letting himself relax. “How did I get so lucky?” Phil says, almost a whisper, like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. 

“You shot me and I followed you home,” Clint says. 

“And you stayed,” Phil says. He’s smiling, their faces so close that he almost looks cross-eyed. Clint’s still not used to being this close to people. 

He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t have sweet, kind words like Phil does. He’s avoided naming his feelings for so long that he doesn’t even know what they’re called. “Yeah,” Clint says. “Guess I did.”

“Thank you,” Phil says. “For Hannukah. You put a lot of work into this, and I really appreciate it.” Phil kisses Clint again, even though Clint hadn’t really done anything—he’d failed at doing a lot of things, actually. “Clint. Will you look at me for a second?” 

He hadn’t even realized he was avoiding Phil’s gaze until he meets his eyes again. In the breath of hesitation—that familiar moment between loving Phil and hiding it (it hurts, even though the pain is old; it hurts to want and be unwanted)—in that breath, Phil kisses him. 

When he finally pulls back, Clint sees Lucky on the couch, happily licking a bunch of tin foil. “Aw, fuck, potato pancakes. Lucky must have gotten into the kitchen and grabbed them from the counter.” 

“You made _latkes_?” Phil asks.

“If that’s Jewish for potato pancakes,” Clint says with a sigh, “then yes, I did. I made three of them.” He’d started out with about twenty potatoes, and nearly lost his eyebrows in the process of turning one of them into a fried hashbrown pancake.

Lucky lets the tinfoil fall to the floor with a satisfied sigh.

Phil hums thoughtfully, standing at Clint’s side with his arm around Clint’s waste, looking fondly at his greedy, lazy excuse for a dog. “How about we order some delivery?”

Clint smiles. “Well, Lucky ate all the dinner I managed to make, and the Hannukah money I got isn’t edible. We could probably get a fuckton worth of pizza for one of those coins, though.” 

“While I’m sure you’re right, perhaps we should use cash instead of Asgardian metals.” 

“You’re no fun.”

“And while we wait, we can try to light these trick candles.” 

Clint dug the box out of his pocket. “I really didn’t know they were trick candles when I bought them.” 

“If we can get them lit, it will be a true Hannukah miracle,” Phil says. 

Clint gives him an uneven smile. “Yeah?” 

Phil rolls his eyes, and sits down on the couch, shifting Lucky’s head onto his lap. “Grab some take-out menus and come over here. We can play jacks while I tell you the story of Hannukah. It’s very bloody, involves a lot of death and destruction, and ultimately ends with a celebration of oil, which is why Hannukah is basically a glorified excuse to gorge on fried food.” 

“Jews are awesome,” Clint says, grabbing a Thai food menu. “We can get, like, stir-fried rice and wontons. Egg rolls, shit like that.” 

“Sounds delightful,” Phil says. “Hey, Clint?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Happy Hannukah.” 

“Happy Jewish Kwanzaa to you too,” Clint says. It makes Phil smile. He looks happy—relaxed, and amused, and comfortable. He looks like he’s planning to stay a while. Definitely tonight. Hopefully tomorrow. Maybe forever.

Lucky farts, and Phil swears, and Clint laughs and flops down onto the couch, using the menu like a fan. “Holidays are awesome,” Clint decides. “We should do this every year.” 

“A Thai food tradition,” Phil says, giving him a quick kiss before stealing the menu. “Sounds perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> i am also [on tumblr](http://hoosierbitch.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
